THE CARDINAL CRIED RED
Cort, John C.
THE CARDINAL CRIED RED JOHN C. CORT One cemetery strike recalls another Those who are old enough to remember the Great Catholic Cemetery Strike of 1949 will be relieved to know that it is...
...Manning and Sheehan had repeatedly talked the men out of striking, but this time there was no holding them because they were determined to reduce their work week from six days to five without loss of pay...
...At the Cardinal's insistence the union disaffiliates from the Communist international, which was perfectly okay as long as the men were willing to work six days a week for very little money...
...Since 1949 the cost of living has a little more than doubled, so we are talking about half as much money in real wages...
...Cardinal Medeiros of Boston is old enough to remember that strike...
...Having found nobody in the hall, he comes out, looks at us across the street and crosses over to speak to us...
...I wonder at the tenacity of the man, like a bulldog, and conclude that it's not for nothing that he's Cardinal...
...Sheehan had become attorney after the Archdiocese appealed to the ACTU to do something about the Stalinist lawyer who was representing the men...
...He says, "I said the meeting is about to start, men...
...Eventually they were willing...
...Eventually they won an annual salary of $12,000...
...They are waiting for about 200 of their fellow workers who have been at a meeting in Long Island City to decide what their response shall be to Cardinal Spellman's latest ultimatum...
...The ACTU is in the awkward position of supporting the strike and opposing its own spiritual leader and benefactor, Francis Cardinal Spellman, who has been donating $3,000 a year to the Association toward operating expenses and the payment of my own salary...
...He might even have read about it in the pages of this magazine, which was one of the few publications that knew the facts and also had the guts to print them...
...The Cardinal now offers a raise of $4.90 for the same six-day week, on condition that the men return to work by noon the next day and without a union contract...
...This response will be delivered to the Cardinal at a meeting to be held in a few minutes across the street in Cathedral High School, a block from St...
...Which is progress...
...But whether or not Cardinal Medeiros remembers that strike I can't help thinking that he handled it like a man who does remember...
...At a subsequent meeting the strikers voted by secret ballot 183 to 0 to reject the Cardinal's terms and to remain on strike...
...The men cannot stand to see their Cardinal publicly humiliated in the middle of Lexington Avenue and they follow him into the hall...
...Up to this meeting the only offer made by the Archdiocese is $1.50 a week, a bare cost-of-living increase, on a wage (for six days) which is about one quarter of what our Boston gravediggers are making for five days...
...Eventually the strike is settled...
...He stops in the middle of Lexington Avenue...
...You can also have a cemetery strike without a cardinal denouncing it as an "anti-American, anti-Christian evil" or "a strike against the Church" or even making any statement about it at all...
...Actually, there was no great inconvenience for the bereaved...
...I follow too, but am turned away by a red-faced monsignor because I have no telegram...
...With him is a man who looks like a detective holding an umbrella over His Eminence to shield him from the snow...
...The detective and his umbrella keep going and the Cardinal stands alone in the middle of the street...
...We felt badly for families involved with funerals but, hey, we have to put bread on the table for ourselves and our families...
...The Cardinal turns and sees that nobody is following...
...The men on the sidewalk are standing there because they don't know yet what the union's response will be or whether they will attend the meeting at all...
...The only fly in the ointment of its joy is the baffling fact that the ACTU, which it has repeatedly denounced as the Cardinal's stooge, has now, at the cost of only $3,000 per annum, proven once and for all that it is not the Cardinal's stooge...
...The Cardinal has sent telegrams to each of the strikers, except for the five members of the negotiating committee, inviting them to the meeting, to which the ticket of admission will be the telegram...
...The ACTU persuaded the men to use Sheehan instead...
...At this point memory takes over: I am standing on the sidewalk on the east side of Lexington Avenue on the afternoon of Monday, February 28, 1949...
...Fortunately for him the lights are red and for a moment there is no traffic...
...Said an anonymous spokesman for the archdiocese, "Recognizing that any increase in salaries or other operating expenses would have to be borne by an increase in costs to people who make use of our cemeteries, we were unwilling to put an extra burden on these people...
...He then tells them that he will not deal with Local 293, but they can have any other union they want...
...Even in 1949 the six-day week is virtually unheard of...
...Patrick's and the Cardinal's residence...
...Actually, the men from Gate of Heaven joined the strike on February 10...
...There was no effort to break the strike and I venture \o guess that most of the faithful, and the unfaithful, were totally unaware of its existence...
...Please come into the hall...
...As proof for these shocking statements I submit the two-week walkout recently concluded at 20 cemeteries operated by the Archdiocese of Boston...
...no complaints have been heard from the deceased...
...Funeral directors cooperated by retaining several hundred bodies in their vaults and a spokesman for the cemeteries told me that they had informed him they could do likewise for another two or three weeks...
...The men are virtually all Catholics, Irishmen from the old sod, Italians, Polish, but nobody follows him...
...Manning is a solid Irish type who because he is a bachelor can apparently live on the $50 a week the union pays him, which is $9.50 less than the modest wage that most of his members make as gravediggers, a most unusual situation for a labor leader...
...THE CARDINAL CRIED RED JOHN C. CORT One cemetery strike recalls another Those who are old enough to remember the Great Catholic Cemetery Strike of 1949 will be relieved to know that it is possible to have a cemetery strike without a cardinal leading seminarians through the picket lines to demonstrate how you can break a strike and perform a work of mercy at the same time...
...The trouble with the union is that it is affiliated with a Communist-dominated international-the Food, Tobacco and Agricultural Workers-and also it has bad leadership, notably its president, Joseph Manning, and its attorney, our own John Sheehan...
...In 1949 it still took guts for a Catholic magazine to print the facts about its own cardinal...
...We are biting the hand that feeds us...
...Around me are about 20 gravediggers from Calvary and Gate of Heaven cemeteries in New York City who have been on strike since January 13...
...He starts back across the street...
...Later the main body of strikers come over from Long Island City and go in, but they inform the Cardinal that they will walk out unless he also admits their negotiating committee...
...He goes back across the street, but nobody follows him...
...And, finally, you can have a cemetery strike without an attorney for the archdiocese making the deadpan remark that the only solution is to have a board of moral theologians decide whether the strike is just or unjust...
...The Cardinal then leads the seminarians through the picket lines to dig graves...
...The newspapers have another front-page story and the Daily Worker is ecstatic...
...When they start to do so, he does so...
...He comes back again, the detective still holding the umbrella...
...They affiliate with the Building Service Employees, an AFL union, but they keep Manning and Sheehan and the Archdiocese agrees to submit the six-day week to an impartial board for recommendations...
...I am standing there because my intention is to cover the meeting for The Labor Leader, newspaper of the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists, one of whose leaders, John Sheehan, is the attorney for the union, Local 293, United Cemetery Workers, CIO...
...As we look across the street we can see the Cardinal come around the corner and go into the high school...
...The main issue was money and it was settled with an 8 percent increase, half way between management's offer of 6 percent and the 10 percent demanded by Local 1285, Laborers International Union, AFL-CIO...
...The settlement got a few paragraphs on the inside of the Boston Globe...
...Said James Connelly, explaining why the men walked out for the first time in his 33 years as a gravedigger, "It wasn't easy for us to go out...
...The Cardinal says, "It's time for the meeting to start, men, and I'd like you all to come into the hall...
Vol. 101 • January 1975 • No. 11
